


Crawl on to Earth

by ValofWinterfell



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, And he's being accidentally creepy, F/M, Ghosts, Jon and Sansa Are Not Related, Jon is a ghost, Masturbation, Maybe? The world is just darker, Vampires, Very lightly inspired by Being Human, Werewolves, dark characters, idk what this is, the rating will probably go up in later chapters, this was meant to be a halloween fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 12:56:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValofWinterfell/pseuds/ValofWinterfell
Summary: Ever since the sisters moved in, he is suddenly aware of the world around him.It’s almost as if he is alive again.He’s not, of course. Hasn’t been for a long time now.--Jon has being haunting Castle Black ever since he was killed, but things start changing when a pair of sisters move in. As he learns of their nightmarish past, one thing becomes clear; they have to reclaim their home and face those who stole it from them, and Jon might be able to help.





	Crawl on to Earth

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a Halloween fic. Sorry for posting it close to Christmas instead! I hope some of you are still up for something a bit creepy. I just couldn't get myself to focus on any Christmas fics before posting this one.
> 
> The rating will probably go up in later chapters, both because of violence and explicit content. There will be mentions of rape as well. This chapter is fairly safe I think, except for a dead body and some accidental voyeurism. Let me know if you think I've missed any tags!

The body has been lying on the living room floor for two days.

 

Jon knows this, because that’s how long the sister with the red hair has been gone.

 

It’s been a long time since he paid any attention to ticking of the clock on the wall, to the passing of days and nights – at one point, he wouldn’t have been able to tell one from the other, and he wouldn’t have cared either.

 

But ever since the sisters moved in, he is suddenly aware of the world around him again. He notices the sunlight slipping through the gaps in the drawn curtains and the birds chirping outside. He notices when they are replaced with moonlight and the hooting of owls. He notices the creaking floorboards and the leaky sink and the smell of blood. And he notices the sisters.

 

It’s almost as if he is alive again.

 

He’s not, of course. Hasn’t been for a long time now.

\---

The dark haired one moves like a cat through the house – silent and confident, but watchful, as if she is always just a heartbeat away from pouncing on something. Sometimes Jon even imagines that she can see him – her sad, grey eyes seem to linger on him for a few moments whenever she enters a room he is in. But she never says anything to him, rarely opens her mouth at all unless it is to bare her teeth at one of the doomed men she has brought home for dinner.

 

 _Arya_ , he has heard the red haired sister call her.

 

There is something about her, something dark and lonely. He sees it in the shadows that always follow her, the sadness in her grey eyes, and dark red stains of dead men’s blood on her clothes. She should frighten him, and yet he takes a comfort in her presence. _She is like me,_ he thinks when he sees her staring out the window for hours on end, watching the darkness, _she knows what it is like to have died and still be forced to keep going._ Sometimes he likes to stand next to her in the dark as if they are sharing the silence. Death is lonely.

 

But the other one, the red haired one – he doesn’t know her name yet, though he is desperate to find out – what he feels in her presence is something else entirely. Not contentment or comfort, but a thrill, a spark of something, a longing. There is no silence around her. His heart has not beaten since they sank their knives into him, and his blood stopped running in his veins a long time ago, but when he’s near her he _swears_ he can feel the drumming of his heart in his chest and hear the rush of blood in his ears.

 

When he’s around her he _feels_ again.

 

Her soft red hair against skin the colour of the moonlight. Rosy lips and freckles across the bridge of her nose. A sad smile, and deep blue eyes filled with loss and loneliness. She almost looks as if she is made of porcelain – _fragile, breakable, beautiful_ – but he has been watching her long enough to know that she is pure steel underneath. He marvels at it – she is soft, and gentle, and kind, but with a strength that leaves him in awe of her.

 

When he sees the sisters together, both so consumed with grief and pain, there is no doubt in his mind that _she_ is the one who keeps them both going through whatever hell they have been doomed to. After months of watching them, it is clear that they both carry around nightmares too terrible to imagine, but neither of them ever speak of it. Maybe they have discovered it is too painful to dwell on, that life, and death, is more bearable if they pretend none of the bad things ever happened. Maybe they have said it all before, too many times to count, wherever they were before they showed up _here_.

 

He spends his days watching her, craves to be near her, to see her smile. To touch her.

 

He spends the nights watching her, too.

\---

She sleeps in the room he died in. There is a large, dark patch on the floor where his blood seeped in to the wood. She had tried to scrub it out one of the first days after they moved in. She had been on her knees for hours, cheeks flushed and sweat beading her forehead.

 

 _As if in prayer,_ he had thought in wonder. As if she was worshipping the last traces of him in the world, the last sign that he had ever been alive. He could have sworn he grew stronger – felt less _hollow, faded, dead_ – as he watched her. But the blood had stubbornly remained.

 

“Why don’t you just choose one of the proper bedrooms?” her sister had asked when she had pulled an old mattress through the house, down a flight of stairs, and into the old study with the blood-stained floor.

 

The red haired girl had simply shrugged and smiled softly as she arranged the pillows and blankets she had collected into a little nest over the dark patch in the wood.

 

“There’s just something about this room. It makes me feel safe.”

 

And so every night he is back in the room where they stabbed him, watching over his red haired girl as she sleeps.

 

Sometimes she lays awake for hours, tossing and turning, blankets thrown to the floor and pillows scattered. It’s as if he can feel the fears and bad memories radiating off her. When she _does_ fall asleep she is restless, incoherent mumblings drowned by the darkness. If he could touch her he would trace his fingers across her forehead and smooth out her frown. He would leave little kisses on her brow and draw soothing circles on neck, melting all her worries away.

 

Other times she’s crying. It’s always quiet, muffled against the pillow so the other sister won’t hear it, and it always breaks his heart. It’s strange really – how she can heal his heart and break it at the same time. She is the reason he feels and the reason he wishes he didn’t. His own death has never seemed so terrible to him as when she is crying and he can do nothing but watch. He longs to comfort her, to pull her into his arms and hold her there, let her press her face against his shoulder and leave tears on his living body. The sobs and mumbled names from her lips wreck him, anchor him to the room, sinks a hook in his heart and ties him to her.

 

And so he stays with her all night, trying to comfort her with a presence she doesn’t sense and words she can’t hear.

 

But one time – _one time_ – after the sisters had spent an evening devouring an old bottle of whisky they had found on a dusty shelf in the study and she had stumbled into bed as the grey light of dawn had started seeping through the windows, he had seen her hand disappear between her legs, and he hadn’t been able to look away. He had watched, transfixed, as her hand began to move, slowly at first and then faster, knees falling open and back arching off the mattress. _If he could touch her –_

 

She woke a hunger in him that left him trembling, lusting, _starving_. Soft moans escaping her parted lips, head thrown back, red hair spilling across the pillow, feet tangled in the sheets. And he had kept watching. His hand had opened and closed at his side, itching to run up her thigh, to grasp her hip hard enough to leave marks, to push her arm away and bury himself inside her. He longed to hear her moan his name against his ear, to see her eyes screw shut with the pleasure of him, to feel her nails on his skin, to feel, to feel, _to feel_ –

 

When had she gasped and trembled on the mattress, a look of unguarded emotion on her face he had never seen there before, he was on his knees next to her, fingers only inches from her burning skin, almost touching.

 

Afterwards, he had felt shame for the first time since he died, and he knew she had woken that in him too. Piece by piece, night by night, she is bringing him back from death, shame and joy and grief and _lust_ being pulled from the depths of what used to be him, and put together into something that is almost, _almost_ , human again.

 

\---

 

The body has been laying on the living room floor for two days, and _she_ has been gone the whole time.

 

When she finally comes back, looking tired and broken, it is early morning on the third day, and Jon has almost gone mad with longing. Whenever she’s not around he feels as if he is fading into nothingness again.

 

Since the day the sisters moved in she has been disappearing once a month, leaving him to stare out at the full moon all night and feel the ache in his chest where his heart once beat. She always comes back a few days later with shadows under her eyes and pain etched into her face, and he hates it with a passion that is only rivaled by the relief of seeing her safe and alive.

 

He doesn’t know where she goes and the sisters never talk about it. But every time she comes back her burdens seem heavier than they did before. It is no different this time. Her face looks pale and ashen, her long her is pulled into a messy braid, and as she walks through the front door, he can see that her movements are slow, as if she is in pain.

 

Despite all this, the sight of her lights a fire in him. He feels it thrumming through him, feels that familiar rush of _life_ as soon as he lays eyes on her again. It is so overwhelming that he is certain he can’t be the only one to feel it. He is worried that the sudden beating of his heart or warmth rushing through him will alert her to his presence, and so he keeps close to the wall, tries to blend in with the shadows and watch her.

 

She had stopped in her tracks the moment she walked into the living room and saw the pale and lifeless man on the floor.

 

“Arya,” she calls now, voice raspy and cracked. When there is no response she calls her sisters name again, louder this time and with obvious impatience. “Arya!”

 

The dark haired one appears at the door without a sound, her face an unreadable mask as lets her eyes drift from her sister, to the body on the floor, to the corner where he is standing.

 

For a wild moment he thinks that she has noticed him, but her eyes drift down to the body again without as much as a flicker of recognition crossing her face.

 

His red haired girl has crossed her arms over her chest, and is fixing her sister with a tired look.

 

“Why is there a dead man on our floor?”

 

The sister simply raises a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Got hungry.”

 

“We talked about this. I thought you had it under control. You can’t just keep killing people, Arya.”

 

“He’s not people.”

 

The red haired girl let’s out a long sigh. “Arya –“  

 

“That was the Tickler,” she responds with a sharp nod towards the body on the floor, as if that explains everything, and perhaps it does, for the exasperation slides off her sister’s face and is replaced with a look of sympathy.

 

“Oh.”

 

“So, not people.”

 

The red haired sister’s eyes are filled with such sadness that Jon only wants to reach out and hold her. He can feel the longing radiating off him in waves, the need to be near her, to comfort her. He takes a step closer. “No, I suppose not.”

 

She looks tired, drained, exhausted. Her eyes close, and she draws a trembling hand across her face for a moment before looking at her sister again.

 

“Was this the right call for us – coming here? Maybe it was a mistake.” Jon swears he can feel his mouth go dry at her words, and he takes another haltering step towards her. _A mistake_ , she said. His breathing is loud, chest rising and falling – _when did he start breathing again?_  Her voice is shaking as she keeps going. “I thought we could try for a normal life, but nothing about this is normal. I just – I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, and everything just seems so –“

 

She breaks off suddenly and wraps her arms tighter around herself. Jon wishes desperately that could take her into his own arms.

 

The sisters fall silent. Arya’s expression doesn’t change, but after a moment her eyes drop to the ground.

 

“I like it here,” she says, her voice quiet. The red haired sister looks up at her at that. “It’s so old. It reminds me of home.”

 

Her sister gives a soft smile, and lets her arms drop down to her sides. Her voice seems wistful when she speaks up again. “Yeah, it’s almost like Winterfell. That’s what I thought too when we found it. The tower reminds me of the old library at home. Only, well –“ she licks her lips and lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “It feels so empty, doesn’t it, without the rest of them? All this space for just the two of us.”

 

The sadness in her voice is like another knife to his chest, and he takes another step closer.

 

“Well, it’s not just the two of us though.” Arya says, grey eyes unblinking, and Jon swears he can feel his heart jump out of his chest as she looks over her sisters shoulder and points a finger right at him. “He’s here too.”

 

The sister whirls around so quickly her long braid whips against her back, and her eyes land on him – her eyes so deep and blue and beautiful he is certain he would have drowned in them if he wasn’t already dead. _She can see me_ , he realises, and for a split second he feels an overwhelming joy he didn’t know he was capable of anymore.

 

And then she starts screaming.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and I really hope you like it! This is really different from anything else I've posted, and it's also my first fic with more than one chapter.
> 
> My current plan is three chapters, and you'll get some more backstory in the next one. As always, comments make me very happy!


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